Current events in the words of the students of Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur

Patanjali

The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events and/ or publicly available information. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.

Massive Brand building and wide distribution- Two essential components of an FMCG company to sustain it’s growth and survive in the hostile market. Patanjali has defied these odds to become the fastest growing company in the FMCG sector. It has achieved a turnover of Rs 5000 crores and is expected to double it this year.

While the reasons for its rise to prominence has been discussed and dissected several times by several people – ranging from analysts to students, what has not been talked about much is its marketing strategy. According to recently released reports Patanjali has inserted almost 1.14 million Ads in total. What is even more astonishing is the amount of money used to achieve this. It has used up to Rs 300 crore of advertising. This is normally one tenth of the amount used by big FMCG companies for marketing.

Patanjali has pulled off this seemingly impossible feat by putting a big chunk of its Ad’s on TV news channels. With almost 85% of its Ads inserted on all news channels, Patanjali has not only found a cost effective measure to advertise but also get the same amount of reach. This has also enabled it to get attention of mature audience who were previously unaware of the brand and also those who would not have bought Patanjali on Baba Ramdev’s name alone. Another distinct advantage with Advertising in TV channels is it would not be cluttered and thus lost among other Ads. With fewer Ads displayed it would get sufficient screen time and attention as Ads in News Channels is almost an untapped market which has just opened up.

The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.

It isn’t for the first time that Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali noodles have been controversial. But this time it comes from the regulatory body – Food Security and Drugs Administration (FSDA).

Back in Nov 2015, “The Indian Express” has reported that Baba’s Noodles did not get the mandatory approvals from Food Safety and Regulatory Authority of India. A month later “India Today” reported that a customer in Narwana city of Jind district in Haryana has found dead worms in the noodles. However, these instances were too small to hold back the brand “Baba”.

Now, the samples tested ,by FSDA, in Meerut have proved to be of “Sub-Standard” .

The surge of Patanjali has taken the FMCG majors, like ITC, HUL etc, by surprise. After the ban of Maggi noodles due to high amount of lead content, Patanjali has seen it as an opportunity to come up with a substitute. That was the origin of Patanjali atta noodles which, with time, has captured some of the market share of Nestle.